Government Innovation Highlight of the Day: Organizational Change Management

An American, a Canadian and an Englishmen walk into a Public Financial Management (PFM) conference and an organizational change management workshop ensues. I’m joined by Richard Hudson and Jim Wright of Evans Incorporated for this 3 hour workshop. Richard and Jim, as highly qualified consultants, are very good at putting other people to work. Perhaps, I’m participating to add some levity to the proceedings.

They say that only babies enjoy change. Change is associated with loss and pain. But, there is no progress or transformation with organizational change. So, as a Government Resource Planning (GRP) software provider, we understand the critical role that change management plays in successful PFM projects. The importance of change management is proportional to transformation scope. GRP introduces new procedures, generates new reports, integrates many systems and usually represents a milestone for future reforms. GRP often means continuous change.

Many systems integration firms and large software vendors view change management as but one of many generic project management disciplines. Some see it as a check mark and do not distinguish change in emerging economy governments with that in the OECD private sector. That’s a fatal flaw. That’s why the CAARMA process from Evans is so critical to organizational transformation. It’s a continuos process of planning, training, communicating, mentoring and re-evaluation.

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Doug is responsible for identifying new global markets, new technologies and trends, and new and enhanced internal processes. Doug leads a cross-functional international team that is responsible for developing product prototypes and innovative go-to-market strategies.